14-22 September 2019 at the V&A London

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Ross Atkin

About Speaker

Ross Atkin is a designer and engineer based in East London. His work focuses on two areas: helping disabled people to live more independently and introducing design and engineering to children.

He maintains his own design and development practice creating assistive technology and accessibility-focused products that span the digital-physical divide. These include: Sight Line, a system for improving the accessibility of roadworks developed in partnership with RSBC and TFL and produced by P.F. Cuscak; MSE Genie, an app and connected hardware that allows a sensory room to be tailored around the needs and capabilities of the person using it, Responsive Street Furniture, a system, created in partnership with Marshalls, that allows pieces of urban infrastructure to automatically provide assistance, like brighter street lighting, audio information and longer to cross the road; Stannah Connect, a tool to help informal care networks support older people to stay in their own homes; and LiftCheck, a system that allows the lift users to see if lifts they need to complete their journey are operational before they set off.

Atkin’s design practice is heavily informed by observational research. He regularly conducts participatory shadowing of disabled people as they make journeys around cities. To date he has shadowed almost 100 individuals in 5 cities for organisations like TFL, The City of York, Guide Dogs, CABE, and Bath and North East Somerset Council. This work keeps him focused on using technology to solve human rather than technical or organisational problems.